You, the taxpayer, probably haven’t realised that the last decade or so has seen MPs spend £250,000 of your money on artists to paint pictures of them.

The idea that parliament should try and preserve the likenesses of its leading lights in a painted portrait has left many shocked. It’s been labelled a ‘vanity project’ by its harshest critics. And many of the individual paintings are getting a hammering.

Yes, this is a time of austerity. But most of the money that was splashed around came during the long New Labour boom. Since the financial crash of 2008 the MPs in charge of the parliamentary art collection have tightened the purse-strings so that next to no money is now being spent.

The portraits scandal has been turned into a news story because some enterprising journalists have done a bit of adding-up. But parliament’s total budget is £200 million. Spending a bit of money on a painting or two costs £20,000 a year, at most. It’s chicken-feed!

This isn’t the real Twitter account of IDS, but it is the real portrait of him hanging on the first floor of Portcullis House, where lots of MPs have their offices:

This £25,000 portrait of me was paid for with money SAVED by cutting benefits. So no, I am not wasting taxpayer cash pic.twitter.com/kKCItzCGNC

I’ve written a feature on portraits of politicians which will appear in the next issue of Total Politics magazine. In it I explore exactly why portraits have survived into the 21st century – when technology should have made them obsolete long ago.

The reason for their longevity is that a portrait is an attempt to sum up the personality of the politician in a single image. It’s not just about capturing the likeness of a person – it’s about capturing the essence of what makes them the person they are.

Take this amazing portrait by artist Lorna Wadsworth of Margaret Thatcher. You can’t deny it says something about the sort of woman the Iron Lady was.

This isn’t about politicians giving each other an ego boost. It’s about leaving something behind for future generations to talk about when they think about the people who have shaped parliament – arguably Britain’s greatest export.

The Diane Abbott portrait, for example, isn’t just a crayon scribble – it was commissioned because she was the first black female MP in Britain’s history.

Such details might escape people stomping around in anger right now. Give it a century or two, and the thinking behind paying for these pictures will be hard to argue with.

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